Honestly, I’m still trying to understand this one. Over the course of twenty four hours, I had one of my worst experiences in writing fanfic in the last several years, and then less than a day later, I had one of my best.
Let me tell you about it.
Two days ago, I got a private message over on FF.Net, where I don’t post or update anymore. Since PMs also get sent to email, that’s how I knew about it. The message was a request for me to write a fic for this person, in a fandom that I don’t write in anymore, and a pairing that I never wrote for in the first place. I politely declined, saying that I don’t really write for that fandom anymore, and wished them well. Then I moved on, back over to AO3.
Well. That was my first mistake. For the next twenty minutes, I received several PMs, all of which basically said I was every name in the book for not writing this pairing. It was… well, ridiculous. Actually, that’s putting it politely. What I was called and told can’t be repeated in polite company.
My reasons for not writing this type of fic are pretty firm. I don’t like the pairing for a lot of reasons (one character was an adult, the other was a young teenager). The pairing splits up a canon pairing that is pretty much endgame. Oh, and this is in a children’s cartoon. So… Yeah, I’m not comfortable with that, in any way.
I quickly blocked the account (something that AO3 needs to impliment at some point). About fifteen minutes later, more PMs came in, from a different user. Same reterick, same talking points. I wasn’t responding, but they just kept coming.
By the time FF.Net’s Abuse Admins got everything handled, I’d recieved 32 PMs from three different accounts, all spewing the same disgusting comments. The person behind it was IP banned. I don’t exactly know what set them off, but whatever it was, it was pretty brutal.
I’m really not a fan of being treated like crap.
Of course, then you have the flip side. Yesterday around midnight, I posted my next Whumptober fic. I didn’t mean to post it that early, I just accidently hit post instead of save draft.
At 3AM my time, AO3 sends out an email to every user that has posted a story. In it has all the stories written by you, that have received a “kudo” in the previous 24 hours. It’s honestly a smart idea, since I’m now getting approxmately 70 kudos a day thanks to Whumptober.
Well, yesterday at 3AM, I discovered that I already had 24 kudos. That meant at least 24 people had already read my fic. In under three hours. Which to me was insane.
By last night, I’d already cracked 100 kudos and over ten comments, which for me is amazing. Never in less than 24 hours has I received a response to a fic like this. It’s surprising and insane to me. I’m actually really touched.
This really turned around my mindset. Though I knew I didn’t do anything wrong with turning down that guy the day before, it kinda stuck with me all day. Waking up to this yesterday, and getting more and more comments as the day progressed, just really made me feel so good.
So yeah. Two weird moments in my life. Both fanfiction related, but both important to me, because they have shown both sides of the coin.
BTW, don’t be like the first guy. It’s rude.
Until next time!